Healthy Cooking

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen. And today, y'all are gonna see something that doesn't happen very often

Would you believe I'm actually gonna try to cook without the use of mayonnaise, cream cheese, or butter

So I guess y'all could say I'm gonna try to cook healthy today. So let's start with my tomato and blue cheese salad that's bursting with flavor

And then for the main meal, I'm gonna be making us a grilled pork tenderloin

marinated in a sweet Asian glaze, served up with some asparagus and lemon butter

Oops, did I say butter? I did say I would try, y'all. And just because we're cooking healthy-like

doesn't mean we can't have dessert. So I'm going to be whipping up a batch of magical peanut butter cookies

that just melt in your mouth. So y'all put away your calorie counter today

and take a break from those treadmills because I'm going to try and cook healthy today

Good morning, y'all

It's so, I don't know, it just feels so good out here. It's clean and it's crisp and it's just a beautiful day

And I've got a little surprise for y'all today. I know there's some of y'all out there that keep a scorecard of probably how much butter I use, isn't it

Y'all do, don't you? Or how much sour cream or cream cheese? Well, guess what

Today y'all can throw away that pad because today we're going to just cook without it

We're having grilled tenderloin, a tomato and blue cheese salad, asparagus, and magical peanut butter cookies

All right, so we're going to start with a salad. And I love a salad

And you can see I've got a new piece of equipment. It's a salad spinner

And I've got romaine in here that's already been cleaned and cut

And all we're going to do is just hit this button. and that salad is going to just spin around in there

and get all the water off of it. You can see where I've slung water where I've been spinning it earlier

All right, let's make the dressing for our salad. I like doing vinaigrettes in a jar

I'm going to start with lemon juice, and that is fresh lemon juice, y'all

and now I'm going to put a little sugar in this, but you can use a sugar substitute if you would like

but I figure I'm not going to be getting that much sugar in this salad

so I'm not going to worry about it, and I'm going to use a pinch of salt and fresh garlic

That garlic smells so good. All right. And about a tablespoon of Dijon mustard

and I'm going to put in about a half a cup of olive oil

But if you wanted to make it lighter, you could just use like a fourth of a cup

But like I said, I'm not going to drench this salad. There we go

You want to make sure that your jar seals real well because this will be very hard to get out

if you get it on your clothes. All right, and once again

I have forgotten to take off my rings, but y'all won't believe what I have over here on the counter waiting for me

I actually have a ring box to help me remember to take off my rings when I'm cooking

All right, now the one thing about this salad is you want to only dress as much as you're going to need

because this doesn't store well after you dress it. Okay, I think I'm going to put Roma tomatoes in it

And I think I'm just going to do slices of this. I think this is so pretty in salads

It's like little miniature tomatoes. Okay. Now, I'm going to take some blue cheese

and I'm just going to crumble this up in here, some pretty big chunks

and I'm going to get a little black pepper. Oh, that looks good

All right, now let's see if I can find my fingers. You know, I've got some little magic wooden fingers that do great for salads

Although sometimes I am guilty of using these fingers, but let's bowl this up a little bit

And then we just going to garnish it with some fresh basil The smell is just powerful and wonderful And that it And the vinaigrette on it smells so intense but at the same time it tastes

real refreshing. Okay, so let's get started on our meat entree. First, we're

going to have to make a marinade for this pork and let it sit. And I really like

for mine to sit for about 24 hours, and I've got one that's already marinated. And we're

gonna start with a nice pork loin, and the juice of two oranges, and now I'm gonna add

the juice of one lime. So this is gonna taste real citrusy and fresh. And then to this we're

to add ground tamarind to it, which is a fruity, another fruity ingredient. And this is our tamarind

All right, now I'm going to add soy sauce and a tablespoon of Dijon

and then some garlic. The ingredients that I'm using for this marinade is going to give it a

little Asian feel and almost like a little sweet and a little sour. All right, now I'm

going to add ginger, slice about a teaspoon of it up and throw it in there and of course

the flavors will marry with the other ingredients. All right, so I'm going to take just an ordinary

storage bag and I'm gonna put the meat into that. Alright, so I'm gonna give this a quick stir

Smells so delicious, that orange juice just gives it a yummy flavor

And then I'm gonna top it with a few scallions and throw those in the bag

And then we're going to put this in the refrigerator, and I'm going to let it sit for 24 hours

But like I said, I got one ready for y'all. So when we get back, I'm going to pull out the one

that's been marinating for 24 hours. We're going to throw it on the grill. We're going to be cooking some wonderful fresh asparagus

to go along with it. And don't forget those magical peanut butter cookies

that you can eat six of them if you want to. So I'll see y'all back in a few minutes

This is the pork tenderloin, and we're going to take that out

and before we put it on the grill, I think I'm going to brush our grill with a little olive oil

just so it won't stick. when you can see our pan is good and hot

All right, now I'm going to take this out and I'm going to kind of rub him as I'm pulling him out

to get most of the marinade off. Okay, just going to put a little on him

All right, now the reason I wanted all that stuff to stay in the bag

is because we're going to take this now and put it over into our saucepan

What, Gertie? Gertie's just a-talking to me, y'all. What are you trying to say to me

Now, we're going to reduce this down so that we can dip our tenderloin into that

But because it's been in that raw pork, you want to make sure that you boil it

for a sufficient amount of time. Now, we're going to cook our asparagus

and boiling water. I've salted this water and we're going to cook it

just for about a minute and you all know to just bend your asparagus

hold it at both ends and bend and it's going to break

where it's supposed to. Now we're going to drop this in here

and I'm probably not going to let this stay more than about 30 seconds

because being a southerner, we like our vegetables you know, to be really, really cooked, but asparagus is not one of them

Yeah, that's just great. Now, if I wasn't going to use these immediately, I'd want to put these in an ice bath

so they'd stop cooking, but that's all right because I'm fixing to go ahead

and put them in the skillet in just a minute here. All right

Now, to our skillet, I'm gonna add something that I promised I wasn't cooking with today, butter

But I'm gonna use just a little bit because we're gonna sear off our asparagus and a little

oil a little olive oil not much and just a wee little bit of butter Now I going to toss our asparagus back in our hot skillet and I going to squeeze a little fresh lemon juice over it

and then I'm going to toss it with kosher salt. And that just smells delicious

Fresh and earthy and almost kind of clean. And you can eat as much of this as you want

And you don't have to feel guilty at all. So, this tenderloin has been cooking for about 25 minutes

And I think it's done. And you can see that I have brought the sauce, the marinade sauce, to a high rolling ball

And it's reduced a good bit. And I think I'm, well I just cut these off

I think I'm going to go ahead and take this off, and we'll check it

And I really do think it's done. Let me get our platter up here so we can cut our meat

Try this. So let's... Oh, looks delish. Look at the juice running out of it

Doesn't that look delicious? Looks mighty fine

Now I think I'm going to just drizzle a little of that marinade over that

And I'm going to get me a little bit of asparagus. And you know, this little asparagus, this is how I like to eat it

I could eat every bit of that right by myself. It's amazing that a vegetable like asparagus can taste that good

I feel like I'm in Asia, y'all. Y'all stick around, because I'm going to have some great tips for you concerning this meal right here

And I'm going to be making those magical peanut butter cookies that even a diabetic can eat

This next recipe that I want to share with y'all

you're not going to believe it. This recipe is called Magical Peanut Butter Cookies

and I think it's in the Lady and Sons 2 cookbook, But we're even switching that recipe around today for those who are a diabetic or just want to cut their sugar

So we're going to start with a cup of peanut butter. And instead of sugar, we're going to use a cup of Splenda

It's amazing how well this works instead of sugar. All right, I'm just going to mix that up

Real, real good with that peanut butter. And then we're going to add one egg and a little vanilla flavoring

And you'll notice there's no flour in here either. And that's why I call them magical peanut butter cookies

It's hard to believe you can make a cookie without flour. All right, now we're going to add our egg and our vanilla

Now we're just going to take our batter and roll it in about the size of a walnut

Just like that. Gosh, it smells good. You can use, for these cookies, I've used a creamy peanut butter, but you can use a crunchy

peanut butter or the creamy, whichever you like. And you can see that batter gets a little

sticky on your hands. You could spray your, the palms of your hands with a non-stick spray

or just dust them with a little flour. But if you want to keep flour out of this totally

might not want to do that. All right, there we go. I'm going to rinse my hands real quick like

and then I'm going to come back over. I can't eat a peanut butter cookie

that doesn't have the crisscrosses on it. So normally I would take flour

and dip the tines of my fork in the flour to make my crisscrosses

but I'm going to dip it instead in the Splenda. I'm trying not to cheat at all

Now I want you all to know I really not supporting you know one name brand But to my knowledge this is the only sugar substitute that you can actually bake with

And see how by coating my tines in Splenda, it makes it not stick too bad

Now, we're going to put this into a 350 degree oven, and we're going to bake these for about 12 minutes

And then we're going to have an unbelievable cookie that's good for you and tasty all at the same time

All right, so it's gonna be delicious. And I've got some ready over here in the other oven

Let's take a look at. It's been about 11 minutes that these have been in the oven

Ooh, those look good. Now, I think I'm going to just sprinkle these with a little splint

It'll kind of give them a little powdered sugar look. And I love using the parchment paper

You see how they just slip right off. I wish y'all were here with me and could taste these

Well, you saw how quickly, what did I make those in, in like two minutes

So you can get up and go to your cabinet right now and have these cookies made in 15 minutes

and be eating a warm peanut butter cookie just that quickly. That's easier than going to the store and buying a store-bought

I might put Michael on a diet, because he would never guess

He's eating a healthy cookie. Y'all stick around, because when we come back, I've got some tips to share with you

Yum. You know, it's funny

Michael and I, neither one of us really like leftovers. But I do love taking the food that I've used from a previous meal

and bringing it into another meal with a totally different look. So that's what I want to share with you today

Now I'm going to make a peanut sauce. because I really, really think the peanut-flavored dressing

is going to be so good on this pork. So I'm going to take my peanut butter

and I'm going to mix it with an orange pineapple juice. And you'll want to do just a little bit at a time

with your liquid on your peanut butter, or it'll clump on you

And it's real important that you heat your juice because that will help dissolve your peanut butter

All right, I've changed over to a whisk, and now we're going to get that incorporated real well

And I'm going to add the rest of the juice, soy sauce, which is going to give it that Asian flair

and I've got ginger, garlic, salt, and green onions. What an easy peanut sauce that is

And this will be good for a dressing or for a dip. and I'm going to toss my pork along with some water chestnuts

and I'm going to just toss that into my lettuce. I'm going to toss in some walnuts

and I'm going to drizzle it with our peanut sauce. And you've got a whole new meal

The last tip I want to share with y'all is really for your children

You know, we're always looking for a healthier snack for our kids

So, a quick snack for them is the little yogurts that you can find in the grocery store

Remove the lids, put them in the freezer for about an hour, and then stick a stick in them

return them to the freezer, and let them store in there for six hours to overnight

And all you have to do is dip it in a little warm water

or leave it sitting on the counter for a couple of minutes, and then pop it out

And the children have a nice, healthy after-school snack. Yum. Well, I hope y'all didn't miss all the butter and sugar and cream cheese that I'm usually fooling around with

I hope that you're going to like these dishes, but I promise I won't do it to y'all very often

But I think that you're going to love this blue cheese salad with tomatoes

and the asparagus is truly out of this world. and the pork tenderloin and the marinade sauce

and, of course, the peanut butter cookies. For somebody that's not supposed to have sugar

is really going to love you for going to the trouble of making them something that they, too, can eat and enjoy

So until next time, America, I send y'all my best dishes and my love

Until next time, bon appetit